Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Partner Rape

Category Archives: Adult Survivors of Child Abuse

Adult survivors of child abuse can still be affected by their abuse as children. In this category I will be talking about adult survivors and myself, as I am also a survivor of child abuse and I personally have gone through many of the effects of child abuse from sleep disturbance to trust issues.

My abuse survivor blog has won an award! They gave me a badge for my website. I have the #8 out of top 15 blogs about child abuse. This was unexpected but it’s encouraging me to keep going. Sometimes I post a lot, sometimes very little. It is still difficult to stay consistent. My healing is still up and down but I’m finding my way.

Here’s my award ribbon!

Other blog news: I’m going to be working on posting my video posts that I took off of YouTube. You will find them in the corresponding posts here where there are missing videos. Thank you for your patience. More audio posts and other helpful videos are on the way as well. I’ll be sharing what I have learned along my journey. Thank you for reading and subscribing!

Trigger warning on this. My entire blog is difficult and can trigger survivors of abuse. If you feel triggered, please do not continue to listen. Press stop, exit out of my blog and practice some good self care techniques.

Every time I say it out loud I feel stronger and more confident that I no longer have to hide what happened to me. It’s empowering for me. I’m still getting new memories but this is most of what I know so far.

My anxiety and insomnia are back again. I’m in another PTSD Episode. This happens and will happen again and again as I move through my life. The duration of the episodes get shorter and recovery time from the episodes grow shorter. I am becoming more resilient by practicing self care and self compassion like my life depends on it. Because it does. I feel more prepared to take care of myself now. Knowing what is happening and having a plan to take care of myself helps me so much during times like these. I’ve got this and I’m cranky about it all the same. I’m surviving on meditation, love, coffee, and a Spoonie/Goonies Never Say Die attitude.

I hope you are having a better day, dear reader, than I am. If you are having a crappy day too, know that I stand there with you in solidarity. Deep breathing and mindfulness meditation have been the most helpful for me. Art and writing in my journal when I need to express myself more. The insomnia has been creeping back as my anxiety worsened. I’m going to have to focus on sleep more this month. People talk about healing as some wonderful spiritual positive experience but the reality is that it hurts.

This month’s mantra is “Keep it Moving” and I plan to do just that. I am being more active and focused on myself. I refuse to let Complex PTSD kill me. Like I said before, I live.

I used to think being healed from complex PTSD and child sexual abuse meant that I didn’t have any lasting effects and my symptoms would be completely gone. I was told by many uneducated people to just get over it, move on, let it go, ect. Here’s the thing though: I’m not choosing to hang onto anything. Complex PTSD is not a choice. I can choose to recover but healing from trauma is a long messy process. If I could just choose to be healed, I SO WOULD! You have no idea how much I want it to be as simple as choosing wellness but the reality is that takes more time than anyone has the patience for. Relearning how to human and to learn(possible for the 1st time) healthy coping techniques takes time.

When would I consider myself healed? I wouldn’t. I know that may sound harsh but stay with me. If I could acknowledge the trigger or memory without it ruining my day or take longer than a few minutes to get back to life before the trigger. To be able to set it down as soon as it jumps on my back with love for myself and not the seemingly automatic reaction of anxiety, fear, and negative self speak. I don’t think that healing means that I forget. It will always be there. Being healed is handling the triggers and feelings in a way that is not detrimental to myself is the goal. Healing from child sexual abuse along with the other traumas that make up my complex PTSD is a lifelong process. It’s a journey and not a destination.

My focus now is to be compassionate with myself through all of this. It’s what I have denied myself thinking if I wasn’t hard on myself, I wouldn’t do it. I had and still have a whole myriad of untrue reasoning about myself that I’m working on. Basing goal posts according to someone else’s standards or their timeline is counterproductive. They aren’t me so they don’t get to judge or dictate what healing looks like for me. I get to do that. I have to do the work, ME, not them. It’s so easy to sit and judge someone’s behavior or doing the recovery work rather than fixing your own crap, right? Other people can be supportive and compassionate or shove off. There is no need for tough love, criticism of how I live, recover, suffer, live, or achieve my goals.

I am happy to report that I have been doing a LOT better when it comes to putting myself 1st and sleep. According to my tracker technology, I have been getting an average of 9 hours a night for over a month now. I still wake up a lot but the amount and quality has increased. My life and mental well being have greatly improved. In fact, according to my tracker technology I am averaging 9 hours a night. This is a huge change from the rest of my life. I’ve had chronic insomnia for decades. This is proof to me that things can get better. It just takes work and dedication. I can do that. I’m doing it! More sleep has reduced a lot of my complex PTSD symptoms including anxiety and anxiety attacks. I have a self care sleep routine that is working.

There are a ton of other things I do which I mentions in another blog talking about my Complex PTSD toolbox pt1 and Complex PTSD toolbox pt2. Check those out for more info. All the things at once are overwhelming for sure but focusing on thing at a time works for me. I focus on 1 thing and then build on that. I know I’m going to have up and down times now but I have a plan and several plans depending on what is going on.

Knowing what is happening so I can help myself has been life changing. Before I practiced mindfulness and check-ins with myself I was living in a reactionary state that was extremely difficult. I really didn’t know what was happening or what to do. I would just suffer and wait for it to pass. Taking action to help myself through whatever symptoms arise has lessened the amount of time it takes to be functioning again. There are still times when it seems like nothing helps but in those times I can practice compassion with myself.

I quit my job, my business, my career. I worked really hard for over a decade. I adapted and tried my best. I simply don’t have the emotional energy anymore. In order for me to keep going I have to put have to put my needs aside. I can’t do that anymore. I quit. I passed this test and lived. I chose myself. I’m really sick and down. I really really really don’t want to be in this dark place right now.

I’m really sad about it and it’s added to this new level of healing I’m in that includes grieving…lots of it. I almost tried to explain more but it sounds well, kind of like gibberish but that’s the healing process. I’m sad that I won’t accomplish some of the things I set out to do. I’m sad that my income will most likely suffer more due to this choice. I’d sad that I cannot do the job I love so much. I still love it and miss it.

So, what now? Well, I’ve been studying another business for a long time that will use many of the skills I taught myself in the adult industry. All the hours slaving away at updates, copy, video editing, seo, creating web pages, membership areas, getting payment processors integrated, configuring wordpress, plugins, ect will pay off in my next adventure. I’ve already gotten started but it’s not quite ready yet. What is holding me back is self confidence most of all. I’m working on it a little at a time when I’m feeling lucid along with the other hundred things I’m trying to fight with in my mind. I am way more sick than I let on most days. I do that for everyone’s benefit and to keep that little bit of denial alive so I can pretend to be ok. I can’t anymore and it’s heartbreaking.

I know I have been away and not posted in awhile. I haven’t felt like talking much. I had too much to process. This decision was very difficult and still is. I’m not going away though but I’ll be switching all my social media around for my new adventures. I still need time but I’m getting there. Thank you all for reading and the support you show me. I appreciate all of you even when I’m too sick to be online. One day at a time. I’m still here.

I wanted to let you know that I will be starting several series on my Youtube channel. I want to lean my channel away from me being a performer and for my channel to be more informative about complex PTSD. My hope is that someone else with PTSD, depression, or other mental illness and are inspired to love themselves and work on healing or doing whatever needs to be done to feel better. If a goofy Midwestern gal can heal and get better, they can too. Don’t give up, it can get better! So yeah, I do have an ulterior motive here. I want to change the world as much as I can in a positive way as long as I’m still here and breathing. That doesn’t mean that I still won’t be a performer or that I’m going to stop creating videos for entertainment purposes. No way! I’ll do both and probably challenge a lot of stereotypes and beliefs along the way. GOOD!

Anyway, here is another Sarah Blake Video Diary with me talking about my experiences living with complex PTSD. I always want to do these daily then hit a quiet patch in my healing. That’s ok because I have other videos to create having to do with coping and definitions to inform others about complex PTSD. Onward!

If you have been following this blog but not my PTSD Video Diary on my youtube channel it’s going to look like I disappeared. I have not! I have been going through some tough times but I’m still kicking! I’ve been posting my video diary on youtube and writing in my journal instead of typing into a computer. Writing with a pen and talking seem to work better than typing to express myself lately. Sometimes I’ve been posting daily and sometimes weekly. I’ll go ahead and post the videos here so you can see them here too. If you enjoy the video please subscribe to be kept up to date of all the new videos that get released. I’m going to start after the date of the last posting I wrote here, April 29th, 2017.

In this video I am adjusting to medication prescribed by a psychiatrist. My therapist convinced me to to seek help through medication and this is what it is like for me to adjust to those medication. I had a lot of side effects, mostly that I was sleep all the time. I felt tired and goofy in this video:

I’m also planning on typing in my journal entries that I wrote or read them out load on some videos so I have a digital record of them. I might record some audio only ones as well. I feel compelled to not have this secret anymore and open up my life. It’s helping me. It’s helping other people. Win-win.

I’ll be posting the other PTSD video diary videos but I will try not to overload you too much. Just a few a week. If you already subscribe to my youtube channel I apologize for the double postings. I go through and reread my own posts(typos and all) and watch my older videos to help me see myself as a person. I still have some self worth issues but I do have some love for myself that I don’t remember ever having before. Loving myself is has really taken all the wind out of shame. Sharing has helped me a lot over the past few years. I don’t regret it at all. In fact, I want to share more! I’m starting to get asked to share my posts on other blogs and I’m going to agree to it. The more we all share about abuse, the more informed people are. Information is power. Hopefully, it can change some things for the better for survivors and to prevent abuse is some way shape or fashion. Yes, I have an agenda as well as a fuckton of a lot of healing to do. I want to share my life to help me and others. That’s it! Heal a fuckton, raise awareness about abuse, show people they are not alone and PTSD is a natural response to a traumatic situation. Maybe someone else that has PTSD sees one of my vids and realizes they are worthy of love and happiness. I want my channel to be a safe space to talk about this tough stuff. Ok, I’m rambling. Onward with the PTSD video diary postings!

For years my brain locked away years of memories of abuse and rape. At 10 some of these memories came back to me. Luckily, my brain waited until I was older to tell me the rest of the story. I have suffered ever since. Nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, fear, pain, living with a broken heart of a child. Reality crashed down upon me the thousand bricks and now I crawl out from underneath each brick each day.

The greatest mystery of life is who we truly are. Now as I can remember the repeated rapes I also remember the resilient little girl behind the smiling mask. I was a chameleon who knew the world would not understand my pain. The burden of child abuse and survival is not something that anyone should suffer alone. I kept their secrets and did what was expected of me to survive the world that treats survivors as perpetrators. I was a chameleon to survive and to live again. I hid my PTSD, the abuse I suffered from countless people and from the world behind my smile. I smiled to say that I’m okay, that I’m one of you, but I’m not. I no longer hope for acceptance nor do I want to be accepted by people who would minimize or excuse rape and abuse. I do not want to be counted among those who are ignorant or ignore it.

My mind is slowly revealing to me who I truly am. I am a survivor of child sexual abuse and partner rape. I will no longer remain silent or hide behind the mask of a smile for anyone’s comfort. I am a survivor and I was a resilient child that grew up to still love deeply and be kind. They could not take that from me and they cannot have it now. Each memory is like suffering all over again my body is racked with pain but I still live.

I no longer hide, I no longer wish to be accepted or to act accordingly. I no longer care to fit in. I know the world is cruel and I will live anyway. Now I take off the mask and reveal my true self, not just a survivor but a warrior, still alive, scars and all. My story does not end here but my true life and purpose begins here.

More than 70% of people with PTSD have trouble sleeping. I have had trouble sleeping my whole life. Over time I have developed a self care sleep routine that helps me to get to sleep. Not having enough quality rest makes my life much more difficult in terms of coping with my PTSD symptoms. I wrote down what to do to wind down and then systematically tweaked that list.

My Bedtime Routine:

At 8pm-9pm the tv and/or computer goes off. (I still post a Gnite pic and look at animals on Instagram for a few minutes after I lay down sometimes.)

I check the alarm and the door locks.

Lights off and light a candle. Listen to music and write or listen to an audio book for about an hour.

Brush teeth and put on pj’s while listening to music or an audio book.

Hop in bed, cuddle the pups.

Turn on the fake fireplace.

Turn on an audio book with a soothing voice.

BAM! I’m usually out before the 60 minute timer on audible stops the book.

Many people do this naturally and don’t even think about it. I needed a bit more help due to being stuck in fight or flight mode most of the time. It helps me to wind down and give my brain signals that I am safe and it’s time for sleep. I used to keep this little list on an index card so I wouldn’t forget anything or if I got off track I could refer back to it. It takes some discipline to get into a routine. I also used sleeping pills for the 1st week of this routine and now I’m going to sleep on my own. Loving myself has a lot to do with making sure I do this routine every night. Even if I fail at everything else that day to take care of myself and manage my PTSD symptoms, I make sure that I do this routine. I am going to use what I learned to create this routine to create other self care and helpful routines to help myself.

If you also are having trouble getting to sleep feel free to try out the self care sleep routine above. Add in your own stuff and subtract what doesn’t work for you. For an example you might shower or take a long bath before bed, meditate, write in a journal, do some stretches or yoga. If you know someone that may benefit from a self care bed time routine, please pass this idea along!

The symptoms of my PTSD have become so intense that I started to spiral down again. Even though I am surviving I do not feel that I am improving at this point. I’ve decided to get back into therapy and had my first appointment on Monday. This was not a regular therapy session but an introduction and an intake session. Basically, I spilled my guts about the multiple traumas my life to a complete stranger in a little room. This is nerve-racking in itself but disclosure of my traumatic events is a trigger that I have to fight as well. I felt okay for the first couple hours after this intake session but that evening I started feeling more anxious and scared. I think I was subconsciously dealing with telling someone. There used to be safety in secrets.

On a positive note, I really like the new therapist and her collaborative approach to therapy. I felt respected and my symptoms that are causing the most distress taken seriously. She even took more time with me to draw up a safety plan and some popular grounding techniques to help me to self sooth. I am simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the work. I know I will feel better if I keep going and that helps to motivate me to keep at it. I have found that I feel worse before I feel better when stating therapy. I have some weird issues about self reliance and failing that are not healthy. I’m trying to rewrite over the damaging lessons I was taught and that society reinforces. I won’t let my pride get in the way of living a better life.

My next appointment is tomorrow. I am calming down from disclosing the abuse and some new memories. Now I’m feeling myself rev back up again in anticipation of tomorrow. I’m nervous but healing and coping through PTSD is the most important work of my life. The alternative is death so the choice is pretty clear. If I want a better life I’m going to have to have to fight for it. Good thing my mom raised a fighter!